God Remembers You

Genesis 8:1

“But God remembered Noah…and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded.” 

To my daughter: it’s so easy for us to focus on our problems. Yet Noah went through the worst disaster in the world. Really. To you, he represents coming through baptism, despite all your sin, into redemption — and what an incredible accomplishment that was by Jesus. He is part of God’s love story to you.

But he also had a lot of really difficult things happen to him.

I want you to remember this the next time you get down.

• Noah was the only righteous person in the world, so pretty much everyone was mean to him
• He had to build a 101,000 sq ft ship (that’s over 50 houses), which was a lot of hard work and gave everyone around him another reason to be mean to him
• He spent almost half a year inside a boat without being able to get a burger at a boat dock or a suntan on the beach
• Everyone in the world but his family died

You can imagine the trauma of being Noah. He suffered. He didn’t just take out the trash once a week for a chore, he cleaned up the poop of the whole animal kingdom for half a year. That’s hard. 

My daughter, life is going to be hard sometimes. There will be times you’ll wonder what Daddy is thinking, or what Daddy God is thinking, when you find yourself afloat in a boat in the midst of what seems like an ocean of problems, all threatening to sink you. Maybe your friends will be mean, your work will be hard, your feelings will get hurt. Maybe you’ll have to clean up after your brother in the bathroom (might be worse than the animal kingdom). Maybe you’ll cry.

That’s the hardest for your Daddy. It breaks Daddy’s heart to think of you crying. It’s the hardest for God too, when his little princess, pushed out to sea, bailing water, swamped by the storm, overwhelmed by the harshness of life in the midst of the pain she finds herself in cries out to him.

But God remembered Noah.

God remembered Noah.

He never forgets, my daughter.

And he’ll never forget you. The Bible says,

The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing. Zephaniah 3.17

How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand—when I awake, I am still with you. Psalm 139.17-18

God’s thoughts toward you are more than the sand of the seashore. Uncountable. Like Daddy, he thinks about you all the time.

Life is hard. We need grace. We need a Savior. We need a way out of the storm, while waves and rain pummel our ship and the water around us rises higher and higher. We need to rest on firm land and not feel like we’re floating or swimming or sinking forever. 150 days at sea without a tan or a guitar or a boat dock must’ve seemed like forever to Noah. He must’ve felt like a grain of sand in comparison to the shore that was nowhere to be seen. But God remembers grains of sand. Every one grain of sand is an important thought God has toward you. One of so many.

I want you to remember that the next time you go to the beach. Or get sand on your hands. I want you to remember it the next time you feel hurt or unloved. No matter how difficult your problems, no matter how overwhelmed you are, no matter how much you want desperately to set your feet on dry land and never have to worry again,

God remembers you.

The Rock — Christ, who you can always rest on — remembers you. Even when you’re adrift, you can set your feet on him. And you will be fine. No matter how long the storm, the rest in God, and the salvation, is forever. It’s here now in your Daddy’s arms, and here now in your Daddy God come to your heart through his Holy Spirit. And it’s going to be with you forever.

Trust God. Rest your feet on him, even while you’re in the boat. That’s called faith, my daughter.

Because God remembers you.

Listen to me and my daughter read about Noah together:

Daddy/Daughter task: Scoop your baby up in your arms today. Look deeply in her eyes and tell her how much you love her and how much you thought about her today. Remind her God thinks of her all the time, too.